The present disclosure generally relates to obtaining retail prices, and more particularly relates to a system and method of obtaining real-time price using retail smart price tags and mobile device signatures.
For the most part, prices of objects for sale in retail stores are fixed (i.e. static). At most, during a sale, a display sign or tag may state a current discount for a product which may be applied to the product upon checkout. However, the discounted price is often not updated or is incorrect at the cash register, which results in a disgruntled customer as time is spent price checking or the customer overpays without noticing the error.
There are known ways of delivering en-mass and personalized coupons offering discounts to customers. However, these methods are generally push-based; that is, if the store does not push the offer, the customer will not receive the coupon or pricing. Further, if a customer specifically wants to know about a product, they have no way of obtaining a coupon without using additional devices (such as a mobile phone/browser, etc.)
In addition, associating a product with the customer's “wants” and then searching often turns out to be a difficult task which often results in no available coupon/discount for the product associated at all.
Pull-based pricing may be present in some retail stores where separate price check counters or stations are installed, but the users need to walk to this counter to scan their product and get the price. Pull-based pricing allows stores to know how many people are actually interested in a product and allows for an aggregated analysis of popularity of a product based on numerous factors such as season, cost, time-of-day, location, etc. Pull-based pricing, when coupled with other techniques to identify who the user is, can also allow personalization of the prices, based on who is actually asking for the price (e.g., if a store knows that Alice has “20% off” coupon, the store can actually apply this coupon and display the new price to Alice).
Further, pull-based pricing also saves money for the company because in order to change prices, sales people often have to physically change the display boards and/or price tags (for example, from “30% off” to “50% off,” etc.) which may require extensive manual labor and time.
While the use of smart price tags may allow for dynamic pricing, there are limited ways of identifying the user shaking the smart price tag and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, finger printing may cause privacy concerns and RF-ID matching with user device is problematic when many devices are in the vicinity.